Two Dimensional Encoding for Non-Volatile Memory Blocks

1. A memory system with error correction, the system comprising: a memory organized into physical rows and columns; a read/write channel encoder/decoder storing error correction code data; the error correction code data representing two independent error correction codes, a first error correction code in a horizontal (row) direction and a second error correction code in a vertical (column) direction; wherein the read/write channel encoder/decoder uses the horizontal direction error correction for error decoding; wherein the read/write channel encoder/decoder uses the vertical direction error correction for erasure correction decoding.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the memory is a flash memory.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein horizontal direction decoding flags failed codeword bits/page bits with erasures.

4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the vertical direction erasure correction decoding is performed on values obtained after horizontal direction errors decoding.

5. The system of claim 1 , wherein an error floor of LDPC (Low Density Parity Check) codes when used in horizontal direction is mitigated by the vertical direction error correction code.

6. The system of claim 5 , wherein an overall error correction performance of the system is calculated from a performance of the horizontal direction error correction code and erasure capability of the vertical direction error correction code.

7. The system of claim 1 , wherein an LDPC (Low Density Parity Check) code used for the horizontal direction for information pages is different from vertical parity pages.

8. The system of claim 1 , wherein the vertical error correction code is a Reed Solomon code.

9. The system of claim 1 , wherein a Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) code is used for page-level encoding of the information pages and Reed-Solomon (RS) code is used for block-level encoding.

10. The system of claim 1 , wherein the horizontal direction error correction code is a linear code.

11. The system of claim 1 , wherein the vertical error correction code is a linear code.

12. The system of claim 1 , wherein the read/write channel encoder/decoder includes a random memory access buffer for temporarily storing incoming data prior to encoding.

13. A memory system with error correction, the system comprising: a flash memory having physical rows and columns; a read/write channel receiving incoming user data; a first error correction code in a horizontal (row) direction and a second error correction code in a vertical (column) direction, the error correction codes being independent of each other; the incoming user data written into the memory in encoded form; wherein the horizontal direction error correction is used for error decoding; wherein the vertical direction error correction is used for erasure correction decoding.

14. A method of storing and recovering data in a memory with error correction, the method comprising: receiving data in a read/write channel encoder/decoder; encoding the received data using error correction code data representing two independent error correction codes, a first error correction code in a horizontal (row) direction and a second error correction code in a vertical (column) direction; writing the encoded data into the memory; reading the encoded data from the memory and using the horizontal direction error correction for error decoding; and using the vertical direction error correction for erasure correction decoding.